The Nutshack and When Incompetence Benefits You
People keep on asking me why I find The Nutshack more tolerable than Mega Babies, Mr. Pickles, and Adult Party Cartoon. Compared to any of those three shows, it's highly incompetent, badly animated, and barely put together. The reason I find The Nutshack "better" than any of those three other shows is because it's highly incompetent, badly animated, and barely put together. I know that's... weird. And I'll try to explain myself. Effort or intentions or even skill don't necessarily translate to your overall quality. You could be the best artist in the world, but if your intentions are purely to piss people off then... well, you're going to be better at pissing people off than the worst artist in the world. For this exercise, I'll also bring up the fifth worst cartoon, Problem Solverz. First of all, I'm not saying The Nutshack is good. I'm saying that it's one of the worst shows I've ever seen. One of the worst mainstream cartoons of all time. And at this point, yes, it's most likely going to remain in the top 10 as I continue to watch more and more terrible animation. Let me try to explain it like this. A teacher is handed in two tests. One of them is given to her by a student, and he left it almost entirely blank and just wrote his name on it. He handed the test in almost immediately. The other student spent nearly the entire hour working on the test. When the teacher was given the test, every question was answered with "FUCK YOU." Both tests obviously receive a zero, but most people would consider the Fuck You test to be the worst of the two. This is despite the fact that more effort was put into the Fuck You test. Mega Babies, Mr. Pickles, and Adult Party Cartoon are the Fuck You Test to The Nutshack's ''blank test. ''Breadwinners ''is the Fuck You Test to ''Allen Gregory's blank test. Putting Your Hoof Down is the Fuck You Test to Rainbow Falls' blank test. I have used this standard since the beginning, and it's the standard I will continually use. I will always take the Fuck You test more seriously than the blank test. Every creative work has an intention behind it. It may be to tell a unique and interesting story, or it may be to rip-off success. The Nutshack's intention was to tell its own story... which it did badly. Mega Babies' intention was to steal Ren & Stimpy's success, APC wanted to steal South Park's success, and Mr. Pickles wanted to steal Brickleberry's. And they each put A LOT of effort into trying to be a fucking thief. The Nutshack put no effort into trying to be a thief. The Nutshack had a very pitiful understanding of adult cartoons, while APC had a WRONG understanding of adult cartoons. And there's another thing: two people's incompetencies tend to look different. Both The Nutshack and Mr. Pickles had very incompetent art designs. Mr. Pickles just landed further in the uncanny valley. The uncanny valley kind of explains this paradox. You work on a robot, making it look more and more human and act more and more human, but at a certain point you will revile people with your almost-human creation. It's technically better than when you started but people liked what you started with better. Put it another way, Where the Dead Go to Die would be INFINITELY worse if it had the direction, voice acting, and artistry of Pixar. For something to stay in the highest reaches of my bad graces, it can't just be incompetent. It needs to attempt and succeed to do something horrible, and it's very hard for something to do it when the thing in question doesn't even try. At all. And yes, at a certain point, the determination to do nothing can become its own Fuck You (see Newborn Cuties), and that's kind of where the Nutshack is. That's why its worse than Problem Solverz, which was pure incompetence. Yes, they have flashing epileptic lights everywhere, but I don't think they were actively trying to give anyone a seizure (or myopia). I will always hate a beautiful animation of a dog being brutally massacred more than I'd hate the same scenario looking like it came out of 12 oz. Mouse, despite the former taking more time and effort and skill to do. And that's specifically because the former took more time and effort and skill to do. You invested more time on a stupid or heinous idea; you constantly worked on it, thinking nothing was wrong with what you were doing; and you wasted artistic skill that could be used on something better.